Unbridled Trails Page 4

  She wasn’t good at the latter.

  He shot her a quizzical look at her phrase usage but didn’t drop his smile.

  At the end, she gratefully separated from Ryland’s arm and turned to walk to the spot beside Emma. Standing in front of Emma but to the side, Sherri watched as the heads of the crowd swiveled to watch Rachiah traipse between them on the arm of a very tall, very auburn, very observant Kyle.

  Kyle. Her Kyle? Not the Kyle who had been in her kitchen that morning.

  Looked like it. And he watched her with a side grin that suggested they shared a secret.

  Judging by the grin, their secret was much naughtier from his perception than Sherri’s. She couldn’t help returning the grin with a partial smile and a slight shake of her head.

  So that was Jareth’s brother. What were the odds she’d find the guy who was very clearly off-limits. Or maybe wasn’t. She wasn’t sure. But brothers of her friends just didn’t sit right in the whole realm of interest.

  Besides, just because she was interested, didn’t mean he was.

  Plus, he was the only groomsmen wearing a dark brown Stetson, the rest wore the standard black.

  Leave it to Sherri to have eyes for the guy who didn’t conform.

  Chapter 6

  Kyle

  Kyle knew the second Sherri recognized him. Of course, he enjoyed it and let her know.

  He split from Rachiah and moved to stand beside Ryland, crossing his hands in front of him as he waited for Cyan to walk down the aisle toward his brother.

  Embarrassed at the tears in Jareth’s eyes, he focused on just getting through the proceedings. Until Kyle got a good look at the happiness on Cyan’s face. If he could make someone that happy to see him, to walk toward forever with him, he’d probably weep, too.

  During the handoff from Mr. Burns to Jareth, Ryland leaned over, eyes focused forward and whispered, “Man, Cyan has some hot friends, right?” The direction of his gaze made it hard to figure out which friend he was talking about specifically.

  Did he mean Rachiah?

  Or was he thinking Sherri?

  Rachiah was more Ryland’s type with her exotic looks and distrustful gaze at anything male. She was a spitfire, too.

  Sherri was sweeter, not plainer but pretty in a different way, a simpler more natural way.

  She was more Kyle’s type. But how did he explain that to Ryland without making it into a game, a competition in their otherwise normal day-to-day?

  Kyle didn’t respond besides a slight nod of his head. He wouldn’t encourage Ryland. He wouldn’t. He didn’t want to engage in any type of competition with his cousins. They were too close a family for anything like that to come between them.

  Cyan clung to Jareth’s hand, her vulnerable softening visible only to those in the bridal party as she met Jareth’s eyes and he led her to the officiator.

  Her bouquet wasn’t blue. Everything else seemed to be. But she’d gone with bright yellow sunflowers as big as a man’s spread hand with deep black centers and green stalks that hung down two feet. The contrast was appealing and eye drawing.

  Kyle couldn’t be more excited for her to be his new sister. He scanned the crowd for Ruby – the little sister he hadn’t seen in a few years. Would he recognize her? There were his parents. His mother dabbed at the corners of her eyes and their dad appeared vaguely ill, like maybe someone might ask him to work at any moment.

  But no sign of Ruby.

  She hadn’t made it to her oldest brother’s wedding?

  Hopefully, that wasn’t true. Hopefully, Kyle didn’t have to go to northern Idaho to bring her home and straighten things out. He’d already spent the greater part of the last five years stalking Guy.

  “You may now kiss the bride.” The pastor folded his arms and waited.

  Kyle shot his gaze to Sherri, their eyes locked and her cheeks flushed. Would she blush like that when she was kissed? She didn’t seem shy at all.

  Cyan and Jareth embraced.

  Ryland leaned toward Kyle once again. “The chick I walked with called me an ass.” He knit his eyebrows together, his frown fleeting but there. “At least I think that’s what she said. She said ‘aw, frass’. Is that what she was saying?”

  Startled, Kyle’s mouth opened an imperceptible amount and a small laugh burst from him. He leaned over after a second and whispered, “No, frass is bug droppings. She pretty much said ‘aw, crap’.”

  “Hmm. She’s pretty interesting.” Ryland studied Sherri as she watched Cyan and Jareth with her smaller bouquet of daisies pressed to her chest.

  They all clapped and Kyle swallowed the jealousy building in his chest.

  ~

  “Isn’t Cyan beautiful?” Kyle’s mom gushed over every detail, running through the ceremony as if a narrator at a rodeo.

  Kyle met his dad’s gaze and lifted his eyebrows. His dad shrugged noncommittally and shoved his hands into his polyester pant pockets, bouncing slowly on the balls of his feet.

  “Is Ruby not coming?” Kyle’s bluntness overrode his instinct to stay away from touchy subjects. He didn’t want to make things uncomfortable, but they never even mentioned his little sister like she didn’t exist. Like she wasn’t a missing part of the family. There was enough time between Ruby and Jareth that she was rarely on his radar, but Kyle and she had been closer in age growing up and they’d been friends more so than brother and sister.

  His mom averted her gaze. “An invitation was mailed. I’m not sure if she got it or not.” She sipped the punch and watched the crowd milling in the cooling clouds of mist from the tops of the tents.

  Growling, Kyle’s dad wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We’re going to get something to eat. Don’t bring up that topic again.”

  The topic. Like his sister was to blame for Guy’s horrible treatment of her. Like the victim was to blame.

  Kyle knew Ruby and she wasn’t to blame for anything. He swallowed the bitter taste left in his mouth at the realization that his parents didn’t see it that way. They still considered it an embarrassment on the family.

  He couldn’t remember the last family holiday she came to.

  He bit the inner part of his cheek.

  Sherri slipped toward the bar set up by the house, moving from the busy bridal group in the midst of taking individual pictures.

  Kyle couldn’t be more interested in what she was up to. He watched her, moving closer to take the chance to talk to her.

  A couple steps away, Kyle stopped abruptly. Ryland approached Sherri, his smile big and on target.

  She turned to face Ryland and Kyle couldn’t see her face, but he could see the delight in Ryland’s as well as the way he reached out and tucked a strand of her hair into her braid.

  No biggy. He could focus on Ruby’s revenge, especially if he wasn’t wrapped up in a woman like Sherri. If he got away from the wedding, he might be able to go stalk Guy that evening.

  With mounting irritation adding to his energy, he needed to do something worthwhile. Watching from the sidelines while Ryland danced and flirted with Sherri wasn’t something that would help him get over her or his jealousy.

  If he was lucky, he’d get the chance to punch Guy that night. If not, maybe he’d take the chance to drink something stronger than Moose Drool.

  Either way, he’d have to take Jareth’s truck and have it back before they left the next morning for their honeymoon.

  Chapter 7

  Sherri

  No matter how she tried catching Kyle’s eye during the ceremony, only Ryland’s gaze met hers. He was gorgeous as heck, but seemed more suave than she was into.

  She wanted Kyle watching her. She didn’t need to be saved at the moment and getting to know Kyle in a more neutral setting would be a better gauge on how much she was really attracted to him or not.

  She didn’t want Ryland’s blue eyes staring at her.

  And it wasn’t just at the ceremony. Everywhere she went during the reception, there Ryland was. Ryland
at the bar. Ryland at the dance floor – even when she said she didn’t want to dance.

  Then a small weevil landed on the table beside her and she stared at the little guy, his long snout covering a very small goatee-style body part. Weevils were her favorite. They had so much personality and were like little old men with hipster tendencies.

  Ryland sidled up to her table, saw the small bug and smashed its tiny exoskeleton under his thumb and wiped it on a napkin.

  A weevil.

  He’d smashed an innocent weevil for no reason.

  Yeah, Ryland wasn’t on her list of people she wanted to be around at the moment.

  Kyle had disappeared shortly after dinner had been served, leaving Sherri with little to look forward to and his cousin to sit there and annoy her.

  By the end of the night, his constant advances wore on her and she might have committed to a date later in the week.

  She wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but even though he was persistent to the point of annoying, he was still persistent and interested. Sherri wasn’t impervious to flattery.

  She’d take it.

  ~

  The working protocol for the department in that area was the same as in Billings. Sherri was debriefed quickly and rushed through the new-hire programs fast.

  According to her new boss, Barry Fields, they’d been short-staffed for quite a while and didn’t have anyone on fieldwork. With the recent droughts spanning over the last couple years, they needed the research more than anything.

  Sherri had smiled and gathered the equipment she needed to pile into the truck they gave her. They would catch her up on more procedures and introducing her to the community at a later date.

  Out on the trail, she studied the needles of the western pines along the ridgeline just northeast of the reservation and Taylor Falls. Barry had mentioned severe drought and some of the ranchers at the wedding on Saturday had bemoaned the dry spring and summer months, wishing for a longer, wetter fall. Many had mentioned fire hazards and lost crops. Many of the words that usually sent a thrill down Sherri’s spine.

  Fire. The biggest fear she had stemming from a lost home to a house fire spread from a forest fire when she was little.

  But even with the risk of fire, where there was drought, there were western pine beetles – a terrific natural indicator of fire danger in the northwest.

  Bull pine were usually the first to drop their needles. Along the tree line, the needles elicited the telltale yellowing at the edges. In trees that were named for their evergreen qualities, the yellowing wasn’t an indication of season change, but rather an indication that Sherri’s bug friends were in the area.

  She knelt beside the nearest tree with a trunk spanning only ten inches in diameter. The bark had small yellow holes with a collection of frass and wood at the openings.

  She peeled at pieces of the bark, the weak tree restricting its sap production due to the lessened water resources. Sap was the major line of defense for trees against predators like bugs. With no water available to create extra sap, trees had a weakened defense.

  She continued crouching, looking along the canopy line for a break in the green fading to yellow. About a hundred yards down the trail, red needles broke up the monotony of the sick trees.

  A red tree and another red and another red. A line of sick trees ending in a line of dead ones.

  Sherri turned, facing the other way. Down the trail the way she had come, many trees had yet to exhibit yellowing needles. She stopped at each tree along the path and caressed their trunks, studying for the bore holes and any signs of frass.

  Closer to the trailhead, fewer and fewer boreholes presented themselves, but they were still prominent enough to suggest the beetles migrated along the trail and down into the valleys.

  Pulling out her pocket-notebook, she jotted the information down that she needed and returned to the truck. Alerting nearby ranches would be the first step of protocol on her way back to the office to input warnings and official statements via her boss. She wouldn’t go out of her way but there were a few ranches she passed to get out to the national forest that she could stop and warn.

  The truck rumbled and bumped over the dirt road as she drove. The first ranch butting up to the national forest was Jonesy’s Acres. The long rolling plains co-mingled with the sides of the mountains as they jutted out.

  Billings had been a different type of beautiful, different shades of browns and greens. There, in Clearwater County, the greens had a vibrancy which challenged the depth of the blues of the skies and waters and the golds of the fields and sun.

  Even while Sherri wanted to get out and explore the world, she was never happier than right there breathing in the crystal clean air.

  Gravel crunched under her tires as she rolled up the long dirt drive to Jonesy’s ranch house. With her window down, the heat passed by with a cooling blast. As soon as she stopped, the illusion stopped and she scowled at the rising temperature.

  The heat wouldn’t help the forest fire potential.

  She looked around.

  Men rode on horseback and others bucked hay bales into the back of a large work truck.

  She climbed from the company rig, dusting off her jeans and scanning for the foreman or the owner.

  A tall cowboy on a tan Arabian horse galloped toward her. His face hid in the shadow of his cowboy hat. His broad shoulders leaned forward as he moved with the horse and approached Sherri.

  As he came closer and his features came into view, Sherri’s breath caught.

  Kyle.

  She had disappointedly thought she wouldn’t see him again. The cool set to his features made her wish that was still the case.

  He drew abreast of her and dismounted, a sheen of sweat gathering at his brow and his bandana damp at his neck. He reined his horse to the side and then back. “Sherri. Are you here to see Ryland? He’s working until seven.”

  Confused, Sherri motioned toward the mountains. “Um, no. I mean, I didn’t know you guys worked here.” She furrowed her brow. “Is the owner here or foreman maybe?”

  Kyle tugged off his gloves and slapped them on his upper thigh, a puff of dust clouded around his rear. “I’m the acting foreman while Nate’s with Emma. Jonesy is back east with family. There’s been a death and he needed to be there to help resolve matters.” He studied her, a hand on the pommel. “What can I do for you, Sherri?”

  His formality was offsetting and after the overwhelming warmth from Ryland two days before, Kyle’s coldness slapped her across the face.

  Maybe he was a different man than the one who had stood in her kitchen with his shirt off and then in her bedroom close to screaming at a spider.

  She shook her head to push the thoughts out. She had a job to do. She could be just as professional as he was. “There is serious western beetle infestation along the western ridge. There are no guarantees that there will be a fire, but if there is a cigarette dropped or any dry lightning storms, the chances are raised drastically for an all-consuming fire.”

  Sweeping her hand across the landscape, she peered at him. “The fields will be wiped out and on over that way toward the orchard. Is there a basic irrigation set up for fire prevention?”

  His hat brim covered his eyes while he considered what she said. After a moment, he looked up, his mouth grim. “I’ll pass along your information to Nate when he gets back. Is there anything else?”

  Anger started to build as he dismissed her. “Yes, this is on an official capacity. It will be noted in my report that the Jonesy Acres was warned about western pine beetle infestation and fire danger.” She set her jaw and turned around, holding back any further biting comments.

  “Wait, Sherri.” His tone had softened and when she turned, so had his expression. He nodded. “Thanks, I’ll pass it along. Nate might call you.”

  She didn’t bother responding, still stung by his treatment. She hadn’t done anything and she’d be damned, if he thought he could work hot and cold on her like that.r />
  Now she wanted to see Ryland, just for a moment to feel like someone thought she was worth talking to.

  A handsome cowboy at that.

  Chapter 8

  Kyle

  Kyle had been curt and hadn’t meant to be. Why couldn’t he be more like Nate, more purposeful, more intentional?

  He waited until dinner that night to call Nate. “Hey, man, Land Management visited today.” As far as Kyle was concerned, Nate didn’t need to know more than that. Why would he care that the woman who’d visited just happened to drive Kyle to distraction? No one needed to know that. He continued, “The agent said there was pine beetle infestation along the western ridge. Something about fire danger and fire prevention and control.”

  He hadn’t been able to stop staring at her in her khaki-colored button up shirt and dirt-stained jeans. She’d been a refreshing sight on that hot day.

  “Western pine beetles? I’ll be there tomorrow. That’s serious stuff. Did she say how bad the infestation went?” Nate’s tone turned urgent.

  “No, but I said you might call her.” Kyle should’ve written down the information or asked for a copy of a report.

  “Call the office tomorrow and have the agent join us at the ranch. We need to narrow down exactly what the problem is and how we can prevent any damage.” Nate’s voice lowered. “I’ll be able to come tomorrow, but the next day I need to take Emma to Seattle for some tests.”

  “Is the cancer back?” Kyle swallowed against the sick feeling in his chest. They needed Emma – not just Nate. All of the Montana Trail cousins did. She was their glue.

  “We’re not sure. I’ll be there first thing.” Nate’s sigh cut off as he hung up.

  If Kyle had to deal with half the heartache Nate did, he’d avoid discussing it, too.

  Ryland pushed past Kyle to stand beside the wall and tapped his boot, staring at Kyle all the while.

  Slowly hanging up the landline phone, Kyle watched Ryland while suspicion reared its head. “What do you need, Ryland?” He couldn’t shake his irritation with his smooth talking cousin, not since the wedding.